REDONDO BEACH, Calif., Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Engineers in an ultra-clean assembly room near Los Angeles International Airport Friday were putting the finishing touches on a 6,500-pound satellite that potentially could change the entire debate over the controversial issue of global warming.
The sophisticated bird -- known as Aura -- is to take flight this summer from Southern California and spend the next six years in orbit, giving earthbound scientists their best look yet at the feared phenomenon of creeping climate changes that have fueled a heated debate among environmentalists, space scientists and political policymakers around the world.
"Some people don't believe it (global warming) is happening," said Anne Douglass, NASA's deputy project manager for the satellite, which is scheduled for launch in June from Vandenberg Air Force Base. "And this satellite will provide them with a lot of information."
"One of the things people are always looking for are signs of global warming that are inescapable," Douglass told United Press International Friday after a ceremony marking Aura's completion.
The event included speeches and presentations by National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials and the staff at Northrop Grumman's facilities. The guest of honor -- the sophisticated satellite itself -- was not present, however. It remained in the sterile assembly area where it was free from the stray dust particles and chemical vapors that could cloud the optics that will be used to take some of the most extensive measurements of Earth's atmospheric chemistry ever.
The Aura will focus a specific eye toward determining just how much of the various greenhouse gases blamed for climate change are present.
"This is the most comprehensive chemistry laboratory that anyone could have built," Ghassem Asrar, NASA associate administrator, boasted confidently. "Having it 700 (438 miles) kilometers above the Earth helps us understand how the atmosphere of the planet is changing and how it is evolving; a lot of exciting discoveries are out there waiting for us."
From a scientific standpoint, Aura definitely has been worth the wait. Conceived in the mid-1990s, Aura is the third satellite in the trio of NASA's Earth Observing Systems built to monitor conditions on the home planet. It is equipped to send back bursts of data to ground stations in Alaska and Norway that will give scientists a real-time look at the chemical composition of the atmosphere from the upper stratosphere down to the troposphere.
The ability to produce a picture of the current conditions in various atmospheric layers is critical to both the scientific groups and to the policy side of the global warming debate. Levels of climate-change chemicals can differ depending on altitude and can change in a relatively short time.
Aura will provide the kind of hard data that has become a bone of contention between the two sides of the global warming debate, plus those in the middle who certainly don't want the climate to fall apart but are equally uncomfortable with the idea of slashing the burning of ubiquitous energy sources such as coal and gasoline.
Of particular interest is Aura's ability to pinpoint major worldwide sources of global-warming emissions, and to immediately measure the atmospheric effects of major events, such as volcanic eruptions and large forest fires, that can spread huge amounts of smoke and ash over vast areas of the world on upper-level winds.
Greg Davidson, Northrop Grumman's director of civil space programs, said Friday that Aura highlights "the importance of good data to contribute to good policy for the nation."
The quality of scientific data used in policy decision-making has been a hallmark of the Bush administration and a point of controversy as well.
Some conservatives have blasted what they see as the promulgation of fuzzy scientific data that is being used to harm U.S. industry through claims of environmental damage that may not even exist. That strategy was used to stall the Kyoto agreement on global warming, much to the chagrin of many liberals, who saw the international accord as the world's best chance to avert an environmental disaster.
The Bush administration was criticized this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists for allegedly trying to manipulate environmental science to fit its political agenda. The group was quickly chastised by another Washington organization, the National Center for Policy Analysis, which Friday called the UCS a "left-leaning advocacy group" and alleged it was distorting the facts.
The rhetoric could lose a lot of its authority once Aura begins its six-year task of scanning the atmosphere from top to bottom and sending the most comprehensive data ever produced back to Earth twice a day.
Douglass said she believes Aura will mean more than a stream of batch files of chemistry when it comes to the next step in tackling the global-warming issue.
"When we first went to the moon and we saw that picture of Earth taken from the moon, it gave us that great feeling that we were all in this together," she told UPI as scores of Northrop Grumman workers drifted off for celebratory coffee and Krispy-Kreme glazed donuts.
"The best thing in my mind that will come out of Aura is the sense that we all contribute to air quality and we all have to work together to protect our planet," she pointed out.
If major and potentially historic steps are taken in coming years to reduce global warming, they likely will be based on data gathered in coming years from the Aura satellite as it silently circles the planet.
